Everyday Stupidities

   I was handed some good news today: Remember last May, when I had my car checked out and they said I had $1500 and three days of repair work ahead of me? [refresher] The money for that has been saved up for a few months, and I think I mentioned the last time I called them they claimed to not have a record of what was said at that time. I also recall claiming the person who told me that was a complete frigging idiot once I was off the phone. Anyhow, my bride went to the dealership and found a competent person, who set up an appointment for Wednesday (day after tomorrow) for me to bring the car in, hooked us up with a presumably free rental (read: "service loaner" from Enterprise) so I can get to work, and it'll be done in one day. The quoted price for the work is the same, and they did find the earlier results afterall. I should bring up the brakes when we take it in.
   The kitchen work has sorta kinda almost started again. Yesterday I painted the patches and texturing I'd done last year, and discovered that the ceiling paint we'd been using in the livingroom is much brighter than the paint on the kitchen ceiling. Given the choice between painting the entire ceiling bright white (and there isn't enough paint in the can to do the whole thing) and finding a very very light green that would work with whatever shade of light green she intends to paint the walls, I think we'll go with the green. So that part of the project isn't done. I was going to mount the two lights in the middle of the kitchen because we haven't had overhead light in there in months, but it seems that when I took the four screws from the fixture boxes off the fridge (thinking they'd get thrown out or assimilated into something) and put them into a baggie for Safe Keeping then put the bag in a Safe Place... I'll be damned if I know where the hell I put that bag of screws. Well, we gotta paint anyway so not a huge loss, but I sense that after I buy new screws at the hardware store and get everything up and working, those missing four will rematerialize... probably two weeks later. The cabinet door cleaning has resumed, now that it's warm outside, and we have yet to ponder when the cabinets themselves will get five layers of latex paint and two layers of stain removed. (Paige has the week off so maybe we'll get there by next Monday?) And I have to vent this rant somewhere. *deep breath* Why does my wife put stuff in the middle of where work is being done, and it's usually stuff unrelated to either what we're doing or where we're doing it, then complains about how big a mess the place is and how there's always something in the way?! Which must be the collerary to her usual procedure, asking why things which are currently in use have not been put away, right in the middle of the project. I swear, there are times when I could be vacuuming up plaster dust in the kitchen and she'd prefer to move the canister vacuum to the livingroom entryway (and leave it there for two weeks).
   Here's a stupidity for you... The ballot which is supposed to be submitted tomorrow contains both the presidential primary and local school measures. Washington has this totally rediculous system where you have to declare a party (Rep or Dem) via a checkmark on the outside of your ballot (which itself was something Washington voters voted on a few years ago). Without a checkmark in a box, they discard your ballot. Serious. The votes for school measures aren't counted despite being completely unrelated to the thing they want people to claim a party on. As it is now, thousands of absentee ballots across the state have been tossed aside according to the evening news, which isn't fair to the schools, but it is nice to see that the idiots who voted for this system are being shown how stupid it is at last.
   And in the "scratched LP" department: Someone kindly explain how I bought enough gasoline for my commute at $2.95 a gallon at 9:00am from the place down the street, then when I was coming back home and did a fill-up at 8:00pm it was $3.05 at that same place?